BTG is pretty much the holy grail for any wine rep or distributor. I used to have a few places that could blow through as many as 120 bottles a week of a popular BTG. If that would be changed to a bottle listing, sales might go down to maybe 12 bottles a month. A more average restaurant might do something like 36 bottles a week BTG or 12 bottles everything couple months if moved to the bottle list.
BTG listings at better restaurants are often given to certain reps or companies that have some sort of special relationship with the resto. It could be just a long-standing relationship where the buyer wants to help his buddy. Sometimes it’s done in order to get in good graces with a distributor in order to get access to allocated items. Tie-ins are often explicitly illegal but done with a wink anyway. Another way, generally illegal, for what makes up a BTG list is the kickbacks given by (usually larger) distributors if they’ll run something BTG. Big suppliers often give incentives for their distributors to do this which is partially why a lot of crap ends up running BTG.
*edit to add that there are many restos that look for closeouts and will run a lot of those on the BTG list. (ie more marginal quality for the BTG list) They know that BTG will sell and people often won’t be that fussy about the type of wine when they just want a glass or two of booze. The resto ends up getting better margin on these even though they might not necessarily end up putting more on the bottom line because many buyers are not very skilled at math or business.
BTG probably feels far safer for most diners. You’re not looking at a long list, worrying about picking for other people at the table, worrying about the cost and sharing the cost, waiting a long time to order and get your wine brought to you.
It’s like ordering soda, lemonade, beer or cocktails, but it’s wine.
Obviously, for people like you and me, paying $14 for a glass of Meiomi or La
Marca Prosecco isn’t the thing we want, but as gets noted endlessly on this board, we are a small minority of customers (does anyone think WBers don’t know this?).
It’s also a smaller commitment if one doesn’t know the offerings. Easier to ‘swallow’ $12 of something you don’t end up liking rather than blowing $50 for a bottle of the same thing and staring at 3/4 of the bottle after the meal because you couldn’t stomach another sip.
That wasn’t really the demographic I worked with but I imagine it would be something like that. A nice Prosecco or Chard or Sancerre BTG placement almost always requires some sort of special relationship with a big account. When you start getting up into the busy chain restaurants or hotels across the country, with locations in hot markets like NY and Vegas, the numbers are pretty amazing. Some serious money on the line.
You may be correct about “affordability”. How easy is it for the typical person to buy a car, house, etc?
But I think part of the problem is that the typical house, car etc today may not be the same as in the 30s. They have much higher specifications and features. Five appliances, central AC, garage door openers, car entertainment systems power windows, etc. I’m not sure how that is factored into official inflation statistics.
Speaking of statistics, note that I said typical person just now. I think averages are a poor guide when we have massively unequal income and wealth distribution. Medians are a better guide to what the “typical” person is experiencing.
TTB just issued their semi-annual production report and I was interested to see the 2012 to 2023 trend, created and shown here. Sorry it’s so small… Too bad they don’t include imports for a full picture. Wine peaked in 2017 – was expecting to see the COVID bump in 2021/2022 but it’s not there.
I would think that wine, especially fine wine, is for most people’s a discretionary purchase. So if the economy is hurting, it would be among the first goods to see declining sales. And uf wines we’re seeing declining sales, basic microeconomics tells us prices would drift downward to cedar the market.
The fact that fine wine is more expensive than ever, would seem to be very strong evidence that the economy is doing quite well. As for depression, I’ll believe that when I can once again afford DRC, Rousseau, and Dujac.
I’m not sure about all your sweeping assumptions, but even if they are correct, it would mean the economy among wealthy people is doing quite well, since that’s who buys fine wines and the labels you list.
I don’t think the price of Dujac has any connection to how working class people are doing.
I think the current pricing of GC Burgundy versus sales and pricing in most other regions would incline that we are less in a recession or depression than simply looking at the reality of aggregating money in the bank accounts of a very small percentage of the population.
And therefore Rousseau, Dujac, etc are likely to remain beyond the average person’s reach.
I doubt that’s the reason. The Uber rich didn’t drive prices higher over the past few years, it’s the masses of fairly normal, but well off people with extra time and money in their pocket. Now many of those are spending money elsewhere.
I do think it’s more been the big increase in the number of very wealthy people, than the increase in the wealth of the already-very-wealthy people.
I don’t think Warren Buffett, Kim Kardashian or Jeff Bezos buys more or less expensive wine if their net worth rises or falls tens of millions. I think it’s the rise or fall in the number of very well off types that has a much larger influence. People driving $125K type cars and living in $4M+ type houses.
